Midterm Prep - Definitions

Question 1

A set of principal design decisions made during its development and any subsequent evolution. It is a characterization of the essence and essentials of the application

Answer 1

System Architecture

Question 2

the fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, AND the principles governing its design and evolution.

Answer 2

Software Architecture (ANSI/IEEE Standard 1474)

Question 3

A set of principal design decisions that are:

1. Simultaneously applicable to multiple and related systems
2. Typically within 1 application domain
3. With explicitly defined points of variations

Answer 3

Software Reference Architecture

Question 4

A named collection of general architectural design decisions that are applicable in a given development context, constrain architectural design decisions that are specific to that particular system within the context, and elicit beneficial qualities in each resulting system.

Answer 4

Architectural Style

Question 5

A named collection of architectural design decisions that are applicable to recurring design problems, and are parameterized for different software development contexts in which that problem appears.

Answer 5

Architectural Pattern

Question 6

an artifact (abstraction) that captures some or all of the design decisions that comprise a system’s architecture. Architectural modeling is the specification and documentation of those design decisions.

Answer 6

Architectural Model

Question 7

a set of “related” software components which has a) some common components and b) some variable components.

Answer 7

Software Product Family

Question 8

A measure of the degree to which the main structural elements (components and relations) in the architecture exist in the source code. (Was it made?)

Answer 8

Completeness

Question 9

A measure of the degree to which the source code corresponds to the various components of the architecture. (Was the right thing made?)

Answer 9

Traceability

Question 10

A set of main components and how they are related

Answer 10

System Structure

Question 11

What the main components do and what they do together

Answer 11

Functional Behavior

Question 12

How the main components relate to each other in terms of control and data passing or sharing; the dynamic aspect.

Answer 12

Interactions

Question 13

How the non-functional properties of the system are addressed. E.g. security, scalability, performance, dependability, etc.

Answer 13

Non-functional Characteristics

Question 14

How should the components be built, with what tool, and what platforms describes this.

Answer 14

Implementation

Question 15

The intentional design decisions in limited artifacts; the designer’s vision.

Answer 15

Prescriptive Architecture

Question 16

The realized decisions in artifacts; the as-implemented architecture.

Answer 16

Descriptive Architecture

Question 17

Introducing principal design decisions into the descriptive architecture that are not in the prescriptive architecture, but does not violate the prescriptive architecture’s design decisions.

Answer 17

Architectural Drift

Question 18

Introducing principal design decisions into the descriptive architecture that violate the prescriptive architecture.

Answer 18

Architectural Erosion

Question 19

A non-empty set of types of architecture design decisions. E.g. structural, deployment, relational, etc.

Answer 19

Architectural Perspective

Question 20

An architectural element that encapsulates a subset of the functionalities and/or data, restricts access to the element through explicitly defined interface, and has explicitly defined dependencies on execution context.

Answer 20

Software Component

Question 21

An architectural element responsible for regulating and effecting the interactions among components.

Answer 21

Software Connector

Question 22

A set of specific associations among the components and connectors of a software system.

Answer 22

Architectural Configuration